'They float...and when you're down here with me, you'll float, too.' To the
children, the town was their whole world. To the adults, knowing better, Derry
Maine was just their home town: familiar, well-ordered for the most part. A good
place to live. It was the children who saw - and felt - what made Derry so
horribly different. In the storm drains, in the sewers, IT lurked, taking on the
shape of every nightmare, each one's deepest dread. Sometimes IT reached up,
seizing, tearing, killing . . . The adults, knowing better, knew nothing. Time
passed and the children grew up, moved away. The horror of IT was deep-buried,
wrapped in forgetfulness. Until they were called back, once more to confront IT
as IT stirred and coiled in the sullen depths of their memories, reaching up
again to make their past nightmares a terrible present reality.